SLIDE 10 Translational thermal nonequilibrium in plasmas Assumptions
Boltzmann equation
Grad-Boltzmann limit: huge number of particles of very small diameter interacting with a finite mean free path value
N0 particles of characteristic diameter d0 in a box of size L0 Ratio of the olume occupied by these particles and the volume of the box:
1 6 πN0(d0/L0)3
Limits N0 → ∞ and d0/L0 → 0 for finite 1/Kn = N0π(d0/L0)2 This volume ratio can be expressed as 1
6 (d0/L0)[N0π(d0/L0)2] = 1 6 (d0/L0)/Kn
This quantity tends to zero for a fixed value of the Kn number
⇒ the gas is dilute
Assumptions
Dilute gas of n
S species: e.g. i ∈ S = {N2, O2, NO, N, O, N+ 2 , O+ 2 , NO+, N+, O+, e−}
Point particles of mass mi: no internal energy Binary and elastic collisions (no chemical reactions) Molecular chaos: probabilities of finding particle i at point (x, ci) and particle j at point (x, cj) in the phase space are independent Collision pairs of arbitrary impact parameter are equiprobable: quantity f
i (x, ci) does not
change over distances of the order of the collision cross section
Thierry MAGIN (VKI) Multiscale asymptotic solutions 3 June 2013 10 / 59